Dolly Parton Revealed the ‘Evil Thing’ She Did as a Child
When Dolly Parton was a child, she began to develop the interest in makeup that has characterized her public image. Parton said she typically had to get creative with makeup, as her parents didn’t want her wearing it. Once, though, she resorted to theft to get a tube of lipstick. She immediately regretted this.
Dolly Parton worried she did something ‘evil’ as a child
Parton grew up in a highly religious household. She admitted she feared God and any consequences for sinning.
“I remember the hellfire and brimstone he used to preach and how I used to be real scared of that and I think that inspired me or depressed me into writin’ all these sad, mournful songs,” Parton told Rolling Stone. “You kind of grew up in a horrid atmosphere about fear of religion. We thought God was a monster in the sky.”
Despite her relatively strict moral code, Parton once found herself unable to walk away from a tube of lipstick in a grocery store.
“I wanted it so bad,” she admitted, per the book Ain’t Nobody’s Fool by Martha Ackmann.
She stole a tube, but immediately regretted it. Parton wanted to return it right away, but her family didn’t visit town frequently enough.
“I couldn’t even take it back because we didn’t even get to town,” she explained, adding, “That [trip] was just a special occasion.”
She prayed to God for forgiveness and hoped to change.
“I thought I had done an evil thing,” she admitted.
Dolly Parton stole something else as a child
Parton’s family couldn’t afford art supplies for the children, and she felt too shy to use them when she was at school. So, she decided to steal them.
“If I could just get those crayons home where nobody could see me and I wasn’t embarrassed, I could paint something real nice,” she recalled thinking in her book, Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.
She hid them in a tree near the school. Unfortunately, one of her classmates saw her and told the teacher. He responded by humiliating her in front of the class.
“They watched as he took hold of my shoulders and shook me,” she wrote. “’Do you all see what Dolly has done? She has stolen!’ he railed. I was terrified and embarrassed. The teacher made such a big thing out of it. I felt completely worthless and vile.”
Parton said the experience soured her opinion of school.
She typically had to get creative with her makeup
While Parton had the chance to use real makeup after she stole the lipstick, she typically had to make do with what she could find around the house. Her parents didn’t want her to wear makeup, so she couldn’t purchase cosmetic products.
“Until I was a teenager, I used red pokeberries for lipstick and a burnt matchstick for eyeliner,” she wrote in her book Dream More: Celebrate the Dreamer in You. “I used honeysuckle for perfume.”
She also used the antiseptic Mercurochrome to stain her lips red. Her parents weren’t able to wipe that off.
“He couldn’t rub that off. It stained your lips and those little bitty bottles [were] just perfect to go around your lip line,” she told Playboy in 1978. “Then I would do that and I would blot it off and Daddy, he’d say, ‘Come here get that lipstick off you!’ I’d say, real calm, ‘It’s my natural color, Daddy.’ It’s so bull.”
These days, Parton never steps out in public without makeup on.
